


Snapshots

by TriffidsandCuckoos



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Because not everything becomes a full-fledged fic, F/M, Gen, Random scenes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-03
Updated: 2012-06-14
Packaged: 2017-11-06 16:49:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/421112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriffidsandCuckoos/pseuds/TriffidsandCuckoos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it's not a story. Sometimes it's just a moment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Negotiations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Fury takes the time to convince Bruce to stick around.

The plan had been to run again, and keep running.

The fact that SHIELD had apparently never lost track of him was a bit of an issue, but Bruce had forgotten what other plans were like, so as in all times of need, he found himself defaulting to a familiar pattern.

This lasted roughly until he found himself having coffee with Nick Fury.

Looking on the positive side, he wasn’t paying.

On the more negative side – something of a specialty – this was…not quite the opposite of getting away, but close to it.

“We already spoke to Miss Ross. She seems to think that if this will make you better, then it’s a good thing.”

Bruce looked at him sceptically. “How’d you mean ‘make me better’?” The amount of disgust, the echo of countless disappointments, was impossible to miss, even if he had bothered to hide it.

Fury didn’t answer at first. “You know what I figure, Banner? I’ve had the best at SHIELD – which, I don’t mind telling you, means they pretty much _are_ the best – look at your case. I know you’ve looked at it, and you’re not far off the best yourself.”

“Thanks,” Bruce muttered.

“And so far, nobody – you and SHIELD both – has anything that’d fix you permanently. In my experience, once something like this happens, no matter how many times you try to fix it, it’ll just find a way of unfixing itself.”

Bruce considered the length of time between his last ‘cure’ and throwing himself out of a helicopter, praying the whole way down to the ground that it hadn’t worked. “I had noticed.”

Apparently Fury had the same incident in mind, or at least something very similar, judging by the grin that might almost have been intended as vaguely sympathetic, if you viewed it in exactly the right way. Of course, from a lot of other ways, it was terrifying. Fury was like that. “So, Dr Banner, I’m afraid I didn’t mean ‘make you better’ the way you think I did. Way I see things though, if you’re stuck with this thing, best thing is to put it to good use while you’re working on a solution. That’s where I come in.”

Bruce tried not to look interested. It wasn’t all that hard. “So instead of the army trying to capture and control me, I get a faceless agency that doesn’t answer to anybody. That’s progress.”

“Scoff all you like. Fact is, SHIELD’s willing to take you in, give you a job even, along with a team of highly professionals on hand whenever you…slip.”

Bruce didn’t try to hold back the unimpressed laugh. “You really think you can handle me?”

Fury looked aggravatingly amused. “You know, you should really look in a mirror next time you say that. Quite something coming from a quiet little guy like yourself.”

“Appearances can be deceptive.”

“Oh, believe me, Dr Banner, I’m well aware of that.” Fury made a show of considering something. “Tell you what: you give us a trial. Say, three months. In three months, if you don’t like the set-up; you don’t like what we’re doing; you figure you can do better, you just say so, and we can either re-negotiate or dump you in whatever middle-of-nowhere country you like.”

It didn’t sound bad. Certainly more up front than the army had ever been about their better deals. And three months without running did sound appealing. He might be able to get some real work done. Besides, “Do I really have a choice?”

“What do you think?” Fury looked genuinely interested.

That was more or less exactly what Bruce had figured.

“What did you have in mind?”


	2. Bow and Taser

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darcy Lewis has no need of your protection.

“Don’t worry. I’ll look after you,” Clint says with a grin. It’s the kind of grin where Darcy can make a pretty good estimate of how many women he’s used that line on. And also how many quickly proceeded to lose their clothes.

Man doesn’t know who he’s dealing with.

Darcy gives him a look, hefts her bag up onto her shoulder, and says in the same voice she uses for ‘I’m going out for more poptarts’, “I tasered the Norse god of thunder.”

The grin falters. Ever so slightly, but Darcy notices these things, and allows herself a point: Darcy 1, Clint’s Grin 0. 

“You tasered _Thor_?”

“Apparently he’s the Norse god of thunder,” Darcy confirms, delighted to see that not only is that particular grin more or less gone, but he’s not looking at her like an easy lay anymore. She might even label this one ‘admiring’. So naturally she then swans off, and really, really hopes he’s staring after her, because it may be the kind of grin her mother always warned her about but her mother isn’t here right now. And he really does look stupidly good in his uniform.


	3. Introductions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony Stark, meet Betty Ross.

“Ross,” she tells him, holding out a hand that’s probably just for shaking, not presumptions. Tony’s reputation is apparently not quite as notorious as previously thought. Either that or there’s something else going on here. “Dr. Betty Ross.”

“And I am very much pleased to meet you,” Tony says, flashing a winning smile and for once actually trying that whole hand kissing thing because what with all the old movies he’s seen lately as part of Cap’s ‘education’, he’s starting to wonder whether that actually works. “Always good to have another girl onboard, especially if she’s not dating a god already. And especially one as attractive as you are.”

Betty looks…amused. That’s probably not a good thing. Women who find Tony funny usually know something he doesn’t, and he hates that. Either that or his flirting skills have been really thrown off lately, which is entirely possible.

“I think you should know that I have a boyfriend, Mr Stark.”

Tony makes a face. “Well, what’s your ‘boyfriend’ going to do? Just a harmless bit of flirting, right?”

“Oh, I’m not so sure he’d see it like that. And let me warn you…” Here she leans in close to him. Obligingly Tony offers an ear, still grinning.

She whispers, “You won’t like him when he’s angry.”

She walks on, a small smile on her face. Tony is left standing there, all of his smug confidence suddenly frozen into a look that was slightly more shock than mild terror, but barely.

Unfortunately, this, it turns out, is precisely why Darcy keeps her camera-phone close at hand at all times.


	4. Reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor and Jane: things change, things stay the same.

“A far cry from your rooftop.”

Jane looks up in surprise, and then smiles. “Yeah, well, after you came through they figured they wanted us in New York. Where they could keep an eye on us, I guess.”

“You still distrust these men?”

“Hey, all that shadowy Black Ops stuff still makes me a little nervous. What can I say, I’m just a simple girl that way.”

“I assure you, Jane Foster, that you are far from simple.”

She blinks a little, before forcing herself first to smile and next to look away. The blush she apparently can’t do anything about. “I mean,” she says, hastily changing the subject, “I’m not like Darcy, I don’t have some hunky archer keeping an eye out for me, and Erik seems kind of distant these days…”

“You believe you require a man to look after you?”

“God, no,” she laughs. “Tried that. You borrowed his shirt. And his name, now that I come to think of it. Which I’m trying not to.”

“I assure you, the loss was entirely his own.”

She blushes and ducks her head, because, well, what else could you do when a hot blonde muscular Norse god told you something like that?

Astrophysics has in no way prepared her for this. 

“It is good to see you again,” he says softly – ‘softly’ in the Thor sense, and Jane still remembers these cues, even if it has been over a year since a few mad days in the New Mexico summer.

She bites her lip and smiles at him, the same way she smiled on the rooftop, because even if he’s not trying to be charming, he is, and somehow she can’t help but be glad he’s back. “You’re not exactly unwelcome either.”

She doesn’t try to kiss him this time. Not yet. Time for that later, after they’ve caught up, now he’s saved the world and she’s spent more than a year trying to redefine an entire branch of science. Before, she didn’t think she’d ever see him again, and she’s missed too many ‘last chances’ in her life already.

Now?

They’ve got all the time in the world.


	5. Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some things get to Steve more than others.

Technically it’s nothing. 

A lot’s happened in the last seventy years, more than Steve really ever liked to imagine. There’s…well, the extra-governmental agency with a flying base is just the beginning, and at least that might fit his idea – his hopes – of ‘the future’, where people like Fury and Hill aren’t just hireable but in charge. Otherwise? The music doesn’t sound like music anymore and cinemas are absolutely everywhere and charging the kind of prices that make Steve stare in horror. There was an entire war-that-wasn’t-technically-a-war-it’s-sort-of-hard-to-explain with Russia, which isn’t even Communist anymore. Men he fought alongside are dead of old age, and America is a country of corporations and advertising and a thousand references he just doesn’t get. The entire _mind_ of the world is different; the people _think_ differently here.

Compared to all of that, the fact that somewhere in those seventy-plus years Howard Stark had a son is really nothing.

And yet.

And yet it’s one thing that Steve can’t just take in his stride; that sticks in his head and makes him stare, even though it earns the kind of lewd comments that Steve could really do without.

He’s checked. He’s not just being paranoid: Tony really is older than him, by more than a few years. 

And somehow that makes Steve feel the lost time more than any ‘Cold War’ ever could.


	6. Report

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fury assesses the situation

“Well, sir, it seems the mission might be a success,” Natasha told him, with the distinct air of somebody who couldn’t believe she was saying it or that it could even be described as that. Which was, in fact, exactly the same reaction Fury had had from Barton.

“Hm.”

“Partial success,” she amended. “In that we apprehended the main target and shut down his operation.”

“We lost the cube, and any visible punishment for the wanted criminal who tried to level Manhattan – which is also maybe two whole steps up from a smoking ruin. Hardly sounds like a success to me.”

“For a first mission as a team, I think we did pretty well,” Barton said rebelliously. Fury really needed to look into that attitude of his – it was getting worse these days, even before getting brainwashed and saving the world. Probably in that respect putting him on this team might have been a bad idea. “We assessed the situation and made a plan; Hulk attacked the right people; hell, even Stark helped.”

Fury narrowed his eyes. “About that…” He pointed over to where Cap and Stark were still standing and not looking as if they were going to kill each other. “Either of you mind telling me how that happened?”

They turned to look, just in time to see Stark appearing to be trying to teach Cap the art of the fist-bump.

“I have no idea, sir.”

Scowling – not at anything at particular, but it helped to have a default scowl in his line of work – Fury turned away and strode off down the corridor. The Helicarrier wouldn’t be fully repaired for another three months at the best estimate, and a lot of people had died in the meantime. There was a new public image to manage which quite frankly SHIELD was always supposed to avoid, emerging in the face of the decimation of New York. His team might have saved the world, but what they didn’t know was that people in rather awkward places now had one more secret to keep out of the public eye and one more reason to dislike the Initiative. 

On the other hand, that also gave Fury both a victory and ammunition, not to mention the part where he could call on a team of superheroes, which was definitely handy. Throw in the help of Banner – meaning resources could now be relocated from tracking him – and Stark, not to mention Captain America and the potential of further relations with another world through Thor…

Fury jabbed his passcode into the number pad, all thoughts hidden behind his scowl. As the door to his office opened, he muttered, “We might survive this,” and strode in, leaving Barton and Romanov outside.

Being the experienced professionals they were, all they needed to do was share a glance to know they’d both understood:

_We did good._


End file.
